Warrior's Angel (The Lost Angels Book 4) (22 page)

“
One of the boys at the orphanage absolutely loathed me,” she went on. “His name was Simon. I’m not sure why he hated me so much. Sometimes it just happens. Anyway, one day he and I wound up being left alone. We were being punished for something – I don’t even remember what. The others were taking the day out for a field trip, and we had to stay home.”

It was like it had happened
yesterday. Rhiannon was surprised how fresh the memory was even though she hadn’t given the event much thought in almost thirty years.

“Simon told me he was going to feed the pigeons, and he
lured me up onto the roof of the four-story building the orphanage shared with the battered women’s safe house. Once I was up there, he slammed the stairwell door shut and locked it from the other side.”

She took another long drink of her beer, this time because the memory made her thirsty. “It was the height of summer
, not a cloud in the sky, and that year Manhattan temps were triple-digit.” She shook her head. “There was no water up there and no shade and it was only ten a.m. The night watchman wasn’t going to make his rounds until midnight.”

Across from her, Michael shifted, leaning forward to place his beer on the table, rest his elbows on his knees, and lace his fingers together. His eyes watched her with keen interest, and his expression was grim, as if he could tell where the story was headed. And maybe he could. He was a smart man.

“I was young, but after an hour or so, I was already thirsty. I started to get scared when no one came to look for me, and then I remembered that everyone was out at the library for the day, and they would be eating at McDonalds and then viewing Disney’s seven-year re-release of Snow White at the Eastern Theater after that. They wouldn’t be home until late. I was going to be stuck up there alone until well after dark.”

She paused and licked her lips. “
The sun started burning my skin.” She rubbed her arm as she recalled the way the sun had seared into her; she’d always been fair. “It was four stories down to the ground, and it was solid concrete. But I was so thirsty, and so hot.” She closed her eyes as memories pressed in. “Do you know what it’s like to look your imminent demise square in the face and know that you’ve come to that
point
, that
ending
? I had only two options available to me, and both would probably kill me.”

Michael didn’t answer. Rhiannon took his silence
as encouragement for her to go on. “I wouldn’t know it until later, but it was six o’clock in the afternoon when I finally decided to jump.”

A stillness settled into the living room, and Rhiannon glanced at Michael. Blue eyes pierced her soul with more intensity than the sun had sliced into her all those years ago.

“I broke both legs. I know that now. I was lucky I didn’t paralyze myself. At the time, all I knew was pain. So much pain.” She took another drink of her beer, and realized it was empty. The can trembled in her grip.

Michael stood and stepped around the co
ffee table, taking the drink from her hand and replacing it with his own, which was mostly still full. She nodded thankfully and took a long swig. Michael sat back down, but this time he sat beside her.

His warm scent wafted over her, masculine and laced with remnants of aftershave and soap. It was comforting in a most uncomfortable way.

“It was the first time I ever healed anyone,” she went on. “I didn’t even know I was doing it. I just looked down at myself and I was crying and holding my legs. I was just wishing the pain would go away and I would be normal again.” She swallowed hard. “And then I was.” She shook her head as guilt and remorse sliced through her. “If I’d recognized then that the power was coming from
me
, I could have helped Willow when she was attacked later on. But even though that was the first time I ever used any of my abilities, I just couldn’t fathom how it had happened. It took me years to realize that particular magic, the
healing
magic, was my own, and even longer to figure out how to use it again.”

Michael took a deep breath. “What happened with Simon?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I never told anyone what he did, and when I healed myself, all signs of the event disappeared – the broken legs, the sunburn, everything. We got in trouble for not finishing our chores before they returned, but Simon…. Well, he’d seen me jump. And then he saw me get up. And from that moment on, he was either in awe of me or terrified. Or both. I just know he left me alone. That was good enough for me.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

It was a few moments before either of them spoke again. Finally, Michael leaned back in the cushions of the couch and draped his arms over the back of it. “What happened with your other abilities? When did they surface?”

“Well
,” Rhiannon sighed, “as you know, two years later, I ran away from the orphanage.” She felt a bit of shame go through her in having to admit the next bit. “What I didn’t tell you was the
reason
I ran away. I got really pissed off one morning and accidentally overturned every bed in the sleeping room telekinetically.”

Michael’s brows both shot up, and his smile became a grin. “Impressive.”

Rhiannon shrugged and tried not to smile too. “Luckily, I was alone when I did it. I was being punished again.” That was the part she hadn’t wanted to admit. She’d been a monster child. She smiled a self-deprecating smile and looked side-long at Michael. “I… got into trouble a lot as a kid. Anger issues.”

Now Michael laughed.

Rhiannon straightened and looked over at him. It was the most wonderful sound, deep and throaty. It was fucking sexy.

“You sound like me and my brother, Uriel. We fought constantly back in our realm. Never mean-natured, really, just easy to light up, the both of us. Finally, the Old Man decided to make him the Angel of Vengeance
, and he put me in charge of the armies.” He laughed again, and Rhiannon’s lips parted. She felt herself focus on him like a starving woman focusing on cake. “That pretty much did it. I never had the time to fight with him anymore.” He sighed, still laughing. “Now he just fights with Gabe.”

Listening to him in that moment,
watching the light dance in his eyes, and witnessing the way his muscles flexed under his shirt when he ran his hand over his smiling face, she could absolutely believe he was an angel.

His s
hirt….

“Oh my gosh!” she exclaimed suddenly, getting to her feet. “You’re getting blood all over your couch!”
He hadn’t changed clothes since she’d healed him, and his shirt and jeans were relatively destroyed, covered in dirt and blood, and ripped in places.

Michael blinked, h
is brow furrowing. “And?”

Rhiannon grabbed his wrist
and tried pulling him up. “It’s a nice couch! You’ll ruin it!” The feel of his skin under her fingers was doing weird things to her. She began to feel panicked.

He patted the
empty space beside him with his other hand. “It’ll clean, Rhiannon. Sit back down.”

Rhiannon swallowed hard. Her name
sounded very nice when he said it.
I wonder what it would sound like during.... If we….
The panic was rising.

“
Um, but it’ll set in, and… and….” She realized, as she fumbled for excuses, that she was doomed. He was too close. And she’d wanted him from the moment he’d knocked on her apartment door on police business.

Michael
watched her for a moment from where he was seated, and Rhiannon knew that he could see every physical change that was taking her over. He smiled a not-so-friendly smile, and twisted his arm in her grip. As she was forced to let go, he expertly grasped her wrist with the same hand.

Rhiannon’s heart slammed against her ribcage
.

A pulse passed between them before Michael used that grip
on her wrist to pull her toward him. Rhiannon tipped off-balance and then fell none-too-gently in Michael’s lap.

“What the –”

“I told you to sit back down,” he said, sliding his arm around her waist to hold her in place.

Rhiannon teetered on some sort of ledge, too far gone to be able to think clearly any longer. “Now you’re ruining my clothes,” she
squeaked. The air in her lungs had decided to stay there.

“That wouldn’t be a problem if you weren’t wearing them.”

His lips were inches from her own. The space between them held utterly still, charged into immobility by some sort of magic.

“What kind of angel are you supposed to be?” she asked
. It was a rhetorical question. But when he smiled next, he was sporting fully-grown, very sharp fangs. And his eyes were beginning to glow.

T
he world exploded into double-time as Rhiannon cupped his perfect face in her hands and pressed her lips to his in a desperate, hungry,
I surrender
kiss. Michael turned with her into the couch, pressing her body against the back cushions as he took over and took charge, deepening the kiss with a fevered need that bruised her at once. She felt his fangs prick her lips, tasted blood, and heat tidal-waved over her, turning her universe into a kaleidoscope of feeling and color.

He
forced apart those blood-stained lips and drank her in, and she moaned longingly beneath him.

*****

It was like fuel on a wicked fire; he could see her desire in the flush of her face and the glassiness of her entrancing green eyes. He could hear it in the way her heart raced every time he got near her, never mind every time they touched. He could even
smell
it.

She’d been torturing herself, denying her feelings, fleeing from him in little ways that brought out the hunter in him. You a
lways chase what runs from you.

He knew why she did it. She was having a hard time believing. It wasn’t every day you learned you were an angel, much less an angel made for someone else. And she was scared, too. Of so many things.

The Culmination was probably high on her list.

Hell, it was high on his.

But when she jumped up from that couch and spun around, her red hair flying like silken flames, her impossible jade eyes flashing like lit-up cabochons, a part of his soul shoved itself over the point of no return and held there. Then she grabbed his wrist and he felt her pulse through her touch and heard it racing in his eardrums – and the rest of him hurtled willingly right over the edge.

To hell wi
th the Culmination. They deserved this.

N
ow, in this unbelievable moment of bliss, with her body trapped beneath his, and her kiss opening up to him, Michael tasted what had been denied to him for countless eons, and he knew he would have sacrificed the universe to
ten
Culminations to be here now, just like this.

Or in his bedroom.

With that thought, Michael shifted, shoved his arms around her slim body, and lifted her from the couch. She gasped against him, but he swallowed the sound, deepening the kiss even as his fangs yearned to pierce something other than her lips. He spun and strode through the living room, kicking the coffee table out of his way so hard that it overturned and whatever was on it went flying.

Rhiannon’s
right hand slid behind his neck to held on tight while the fingers of her other hand curled into his shirt against his chest. His boot slammed open the door to his bedroom. In another two strides he was at his bed, lowering her to the sheets beneath him.

She clung for a moment, unsure of what was beneath her, but
he was in no mood for hesitation. As soon as her back touched the mattress, he rose up above her, breaking the kiss. Rhiannon made a small disappointed sound, and Michael’s entire body reacted. It was his final undoing.

Lust surged through him, hard and
relentless. He wanted more. So much more.

He could have done away with their clothing with no more than a thought. The vampire in him gave him that much dark power. He could have left her defenseless and reeling from climax aft
er climax without even touching her. He could have demolished her mind and made her his slave.

But where was the sport in any of that? Michael had never been the kind of archangel to take the easy route. A prize was so much more rewarding when you
had earned it.

Rhiannon gazed up at
him through half-closed lids; her lips were parted, and her breaths came short and fast. He could smell the lust in her blood, hormones that stormed her body like unchecked warriors. They did the same to him, like a siren call to a lost sailor.

H
e could also smell her fear.

Her gaze
was focused on his mouth, watching his fangs. There was need in her eyes; her entire body swelled with it, ripe and wanton. She was afraid of him, but the fighter in her
yearned
for the same darkness that scared her. They were kindred spirits.

Michael moved with blurring speed, re-claiming her lips because he needed her, couldn’t stand to be without her a millisecond more.
But as he did, he curled his fingers beneath the hem of her shirt and ripped it apart, shredding it from her body.

Rhiannon cried out into his mouth, but only from surprise. He gave her no recourse, going for the waistband of her jeans next. She made a small sound of protest against him, and he felt her palms press hard against his chest.

Michael smiled against her lips. His gums ached with a mounting,
different
kind of hunger. If she hoped to shove him away again, as she had earlier, she was in for a surprise. He’d
let
her get away that time. Now, he wasn’t going anywhere.

In some kind of desperation, Rhiannon turned her head, breaking the kiss. As she did, his fangs scraped against her bottom lip, nearly pricking their full plumpness again.

He growled, the monsters in him bucking and rising, clawing at the ground to gain control.

“Michael!” she rasped, and her eyes echoed her desperation.
It wasn’t a real desperation, per se; more of a very great admonishment laced with unruly amounts of desire. “Don’t you dare!” she chided between breaths. “These jeans are
Roberto Cavalli!
”

He
chuckled, and it was a very dark sound. He pinned his arms on either side of her head and moved over her like a massive predator over weakening prey. She was purposefully taunting him, he knew. She was fighting with him in a new kind of way, because that was all she knew how to do – fight.

She was playing with the worst kind of fire.

“Then take them off, Rhiannon,” he warned her, his deep, rumbling voice nearly unrecognizable in its lust. “Or I will do it for you.”

Her eyes widened
. Her heavy breathing forced her breasts to rise and fall in eager, milky tantalization above the lace of her demi-bra.

“
Now
,” he added in all seriousness. She had very little time to save what garments yet remained on her precious, tempting body.

Rhiannon stared up at him for a few beats more, and
something inordinately stubborn passed over her beautiful features. So slowly that it was a direct challenge to him all its own, she placed her hands upon her stomach and slid her fingers over her abdomen toward the buttons of her jeans.

The growling sound grew, like thunder
low and ominous, and Michael was barely able to concentrate on it enough to realize it was coming from him.

Rhia
nnon ignored his impatience. Like a peasant taunting a king on a throne, she
smiled
. It was a smile as sultry and ultimately teasing as the movement of her fingers over her taut stomach, and Michael could scarcely believe that she would tempt the beast in such a fashion.

He watched, temporarily stunned
by her brazenness, as she popped open the top button on her jeans and slid the zipper down one grueling rung at a time. It made a stark sound in the silence, like a countdown for a ticking bomb.

Michael felt his downfall
like a rollercoaster dropping out from under him. He may have been the Warrior Archangel, but she was the
Warrior Archess
. After all this time, after all the battles he’d heralded, despite all the damnable supernatural monsters inside him in that moment, and regardless of the incredible strength surging through every pore in his body, he was going to lose this battle.

“You win,” he said aloud.

Then he ripped the jeans from her hands and tore them from her body, eliciting a mock cry of outrage from Rhiannon. He silenced it with a bruising kiss swathed in punishing Nightmare power that stole the breath from her lungs and plunged her head-long into an orgasm that rocked her body beneath his and took the fight right out of her.